Jessica G.

I am going to feel responsible for bringing y'all down from your Obama high, but there's this article in the Village Voice about one of the Experience Project's most popular threads about living in a sexless marriage and it's fairly bittersweet. The Experience Project is sort of like Post Secret: the message board — it's a place for people to anonymously share their stories. The "I Live in a Sexless Marriage" forum has over 3,000 members, and according to the Voice's Bonnie Ruberg, those sexless and sad spouses "run the gamut—men whose wives have lost interest after having kids, women who fear their husbands might be gay, men whose wives are marred by childhood trauma."The saddest tale of all is from a woman identified as Grits4Ever, who talked to Ruberg on the phone but would not give her real name because she feared being outed. Her husband watches porn, sometimes for 10-12 hours a day, and her first post in the forum was entitled "Husband Says We Would Have More Sex If I Did it More Like a Whore.” While the existence of Grist4Ever sounds pretty bleak, she says she is heartened by getting her thoughts out to a like-minded community. “I used to feel ashamed,” she admits, “like I was the only one out there with a problem, like it was my fault.” But now she feels better…though apparently not good enough to dump someone who says they would have more sex with her if she "did it like a whore." The piece, however, makes a good point: most sexless marriages aren't as cut and dry as Grist4Ever's, where one person is clearly being a jerk. 15-20% of married people have sex fewer than 10 times a year, and as Grits4Ever notes, "So many of the people on here, they don’t want to end their marriages. They love their spouses. But they don’t know how to deal with the issue.” Obviously having an outlet to vent frustration helps, so does therapy, for some people. But how do you stay in a longterm relationship when desires are clearly incompatible? Stuck In A Sexless Marriage? You're Not Alone. [Village Voice]